


immovable to old idolatries

by PikaCheeka



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Codependency, Don't copy to another site, Human Experimentation, M/M, idolatry, some good old gaslighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-12-06 20:27:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18225032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PikaCheeka/pseuds/PikaCheeka
Summary: The Adagium is an experiment, a weapon, a mystery akin to the sort of god the foolish Lucians revere.Until Verstael Besithia discovers that he can be pushed to feel as any human, and he begins to understand that idolatry is not limited to the Astrals.





	immovable to old idolatries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KatelynnKittaly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatelynnKittaly/gifts).



> I started this way back in November, then shelved it for several months. The ship grew popular during this period, and I felt that this fic was too weird to add to the mix, so I continued to let it sit on the shelf. I finally decided to finish it recently in time for the DLC, so I slammed it out in the last couple of days. I know some of it contradicts the conversation in the Famitsu article, but I didn't want to rewrite everything I had done and decided that it would be okay to keep it if I got it out before the game. I have quite a few more scenes drafted between the two of them, but decided to focus only on their first eighteen months (I'll probably dump the rest at some point!). Like most of my FF works, this started off as a bit of a joke because I am not taking the DLC seriously, but Verstael ended up being too much fun to write! Regardless, I'll be back to my regular ship next time around. 
> 
> (Sorry, Kate)

 

“When.”

The first utterance of the beast. _When_. It is not a question, only a statement. But Verstael knows better, knows it is a _command_ , because this being before him is very nearly a deity.

Born 2012 years ago. He should not be demanding to know when, but how. How can such a thing happen? He can not wrap his mind around it, can not fathom what lies before him, even now that he has seen, has heard. He must feel him next, _touch_ him, but he doesn’t dare, not even with gloves. The Scourge. Perhaps not a deity, but the impossible embodiment of all that is hostile in this world, a manifestation of the most deadly disease the human race had ever seen. Verstael does not believe in sin, though he has heard that many in the backwaters of Lucis believe the Scourge is a punishment. _They haven’t seen the god that bears it_.

“When,” _he_ says again, this time louder, more forceful, his voice raw and hoarse but at once unnerving to his ears. Nonetheless, Verstael finds himself leaning forward as he responds.

“February 26th, 722. The Modern Era.” Unnecessary.

He only cocks his head, lank red hair falling across his face. But his eyes are alert, hungry, and strangely terrifying. _Gold_. He’d never heard of the Scourge changing one’s eye color before. No genetic combination known to humans allows for eyes of such a color, so it must be the Scourge. The virus. Or perhaps parasite. There are conflicting thoughts on the matter and Verstael has never had the proper chance to study it. Until now.

Verstael can’t look away as he pushes on. “Nearly 2000 years since the founding of Insomnia.”

A shade passes over his face and Verstael hears the soldiers behind him recoil, but he stands firm and keeps grinning up at him, at this divine being that embodies all that he seeks to understand. “Do you know who you are?”

Silence, but the fury in his eyes indicates that _yes_ , he certainly knows who he is. Amazing. Verstael wonders if he had retained lucidity, consciousness, while being strung up for nearly two thousand years. _Likely not_ , or he wouldn’t be sane enough to even utter a word. If so, he’d be a remarkable specimen for the study of trauma, memory, and madness.

Verstael sighs and steps back then. “Finish unchaining him.” Because he hadn’t uttered a word until two of the chains were released. Perhaps fully freeing him will allow him to speak in full sentences. _Likely not_. Maybe sanity is found more in silence.

-

He shrieks when the sunlight hits him, an inhuman howl that causes several soldiers to cower and drop their weaponry in alarm. Humans are too easily frightened. And Verstael only stares, fascinated. Demons can not sustain long periods, or even any periods, in the sunlight. He knew this well. He’d found demonified creatures as a child, usually stray cats. And he’d caught a couple of them, shoved them in cages and left them out in the sun to document what would happen. This… _thing_ might be the most powerful of all demons, but perhaps he, too, can not survive. _We shouldn’t kill him, shouldn’t run the risk of anything happening when he has survived for so long. He will save Niflheim. He will save the world._

But he doesn’t move, doesn’t motion for anyone to cover him. He only watches, fascinated. The corpse can be just as useful, perhaps, though if sunlight can really kill him, perhaps he isn’t worth studying after all.

And he lives. He eventually drags his hands from his face, eyes bloodshot and narrowed. “Sun.”

“Yes, it would appear to be so,” Verstael continues to stare, wondering if this creature can sense sarcasm. Did it exist in the same way two thousand years ago? How was one witty and cunning back then? If the Adagium was witty and cunning at all.

If he was _anything_ at all.

-

He reacts to his name, which is a start. Reacts to _Lucis Caelum_ more often than _Izunia_ , not that Verstael keeps notes. So perhaps he doesn’t remember what happened, or even know exactly who he is. _Does he know he is Adagium, the Accursed? Does he know he carries the Starscourge within him?_ Though Verstael doesn’t know if he does yet.

It’s day three and he hasn’t conducted a single test, mainly because the Adagium spends a lot of time looking at the walls with bloodshot eyes, wearing the scraps of clothing he’d been entombed in. He doesn’t seem to need to eat or sleep, which indicates _something_. Verstael can’t wait to get his hands on him, run tests on him, find out what he is, but he must wait a little longer.

They make him presentable that day. It is the best they can do, because he barely speaks or blinks or moves and they clearly aren’t going to turn him into a weapon of mass destruction overnight.

He’s beautiful, a perfect specimen, though what he is a specimen _of_ , Verstael isn’t sure. He’s certainly not a human, not any longer. Nor is he a demon. Nor a deity, regardless of what some of the soldiers might believe, regardless of what Verstael repeatedly catches himself thinking. _I will not fall to the Lucian delusions, will not fall to idolatry._ If he is not a human, a demon, or a god, that leaves precious little for Verstael to work with.

Not that he is working with him. Because now he stands outside a cell with a wall of bulletproof glass.

“He’s not going to hurt you,” Verstael sneers, but he makes no effort to step into the room. _Better you than me. You aren’t as important as I am._

“How would you know?”

He gestures at him in an irritated manner. “He’s practically catatonic.”

The soldier looks down at him nervously. He’s so stupid that Verstael can see his thoughts passing through his face. Fair enough. He does appear to be catatonic. “What should I do with him?”

“Cut his hair,” Verstael waves his hand dismissively. “Make it even, at the very least. Measure him and get clothes for him. He can’t wear that forever. ”

Biggs scowls again, but he obeys. He obeys and he walks in there and lasts a total of seventy-three seconds before he runs back through the door and snarls at Verstael in frustration. “I can’t deal with him.”

“He didn’t touch you. I’ve been watching.” True. There had been no touching at all.

“He’s a fucking freak.”

“I won’t contest that.”

“I’m not paid enough to deal with creepy Cosmogony rejects.”

“I won’t contest that either.” _But I will see that you are fired, you cowardly filth_. Still, he absently waves the man away and stands in silence before the door.

He watches him for a long time, this monster. And it’s an equally long time before he steps into the room, moves towards him.

He doesn’t realize what he’s doing, doesn’t realize that he’s reaching forward, touching his shoulder gently. And when he sees it, when he looks down and sees his own hand, he flinches, nearly jerks away, but he forces himself to stop. _Of course. Of course I must. He is a specimen. He must be studied. He is a marvel. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study the Scourge, to study immortality, to study divinity._

And as if to defy himself, he increases the pressure on his shoulder, leans on him until Ardyn is forced to move towards him, drop his shoulder and cock his head. Harder. He can feel the muscles beneath his skin, tight and hard, as if he hadn’t been strung up for two thousand years. _An impossibility_. He squeezes, digs his fingers into him and moves his hand over an inch or two, at the junction of his neck. He can feel blood pulsing beneath his fingers. _A heartbeat_.

But then he moves. He growls at him, a slow rattling in his chest that drops in pitch and operates in such a way that verstael can feel it in his marrow. He jerks his hands back, eyes wide.

“ _What_?”

Ardyn the Adagium leans to the side slowly, leans until he is pressing against his thigh. “I haven’t been touched. In nearly two thousand years.”

Verstael looks away, horrified at the blush he knows has covered his face. “You should have behaved earlier. Then you would have been touched earlier.”

Ardyn only shakes his head once and Verstael sighs. _Fair enough. Because Biggs wouldn’t have touched him, would have only continued darting in and jabbing at him with scissors. He thinks I am treating him like a human, when I am the farthest from such a thing._ It almost made him feel guilty.

-

“You’re in charge of him.”

“I. _What?_ ” Insubordination. He shouldn’t be speaking to the emperor like this, but he is so taken aback he doesn’t know what else to say.

“He won’t cooperate with anyone else. Keeps asking for you.”

It’s true. Day ten now. He is speaking more, though only just. Because right now, the best Ardyn can do is cock his head and growl out Verstael’s name every time someone tries to speak to him. Unnerving, but _compelling_. Still, there’s only so much Verstael can do with him until he can be certain that he’s relatively harmless. Right now he’s a feral animal, unpredictable and esoteric. Let him go full demon and eat the guards. There are enough of them, but there’s only one of Verstael. “I want to study him. I don’t want to teach him how to tie his shoes.”

“I’m sorry. Is there much of a difference? I must have misunderstood what you do all day.”

He fumes inwardly, but Iedolas isn’t even looking at him now. _He’s isn’t even much older than me, and yet he is the emperor. He doesn’t deserve it. He’s too stupid. Everyone in the government, the military, is an idiot. Except Ardyn perhaps. He hasn’t had the chance to disprove himself yet._

The truth is that he’s afraid of the Adagium, that he’s been avoiding him not because he fears Ardyn might kill him, but because he fears the humanity he wasn’t expecting to find in a god. _Do not call him a god. Do not fall to old idolatries. He is a specimen to be studied and used._ He can still feel his skin, his warmth, on his fingertips, and it makes him uneasy in a way he can’t understand.

-

He only watches him on day eleven, but on the twelfth day, he approaches him, crouches down in the observation room and suggests that Ardyn visit him in his office

He’s suspicious, and rightly so. “Why?”

“Because whatever you might be, you have a human form, and therefore I will treat you like a human.” Not really. Verstael never lets anyone in his office. He wouldn’t even let the Emperor into his office.

If Ardyn is alarmed at the possibility that he isn’t human, he hides it well. “Maybe I like it here.”

Verstael is taken aback by this. Not only a full sentence, but lucidity, poise, recognition. An actual response in a conversation, far more than he’d offered before, when Verstael had touched him. He wonders if Ardyn was aware all this time, if he was merely keeping quiet for reasons of his own. Perhaps the thought of the modern world was too intimidating for him. Perhaps he was planning something. Perhaps he didn’t give a fuck what was happening and just decided to roll with it. “And I like it in my office.”

Ardyn gives him that look of vague disgust that he is so good at, but he gets up from the cot he’d been lying in as he stared at maps of the world, probably new to him. The borders had changed a lot over the centuries, after all. He’s wearing some of the clothing given to him. Pants and a shirt. He hadn’t known what underwear was, and Verstael hadn’t wanted to explain it to him.

Explaining modern plumbing was bad enough.

Verstael is giddy as they walk down the halls of the stronghold. The most powerful being in the world is trailing behind him. The father of all demons, the devourer of the plague, is slouching down the hall only a few feet behind him. His strides are noticeably too wide as he approaches the office door now, swings it open and gestures the Adagium inside.

Ardyn unexpectedly slams the door behind him, and Verstael jumps despite himself.

-

“You don’t have to use a fork and knife, if you don’t wish to. I won’t judge.”

The Adagium gives him a strange, vaguely startled look, as if Verstael had suggested that he eat off the floor. _Did ancient Lucians use silverware? Why didn’t I research this_? He clears his throat. “Let’s have a little chat, shall we?”

Silence.

“The Emperor suggested that you’d like an apartment. It’s been arranged.”

 “What’s this?”

“It’s schnitzel. Very tasty. The apartment will be fully furnished. We’d like you to enjoy Gralean society while you support our—”  

“Huh. And wine?”

“Uhm,” he tries not to be irritated. There is a creeping sense of unease in his spine, as if there is something happening here that he is missing. Ardyn has been alone in the darkness for centuries, but his childish comments are putting Verstael on edge in a way he can’t describe. “Yes.”

“I like wine.”

“As I was saying, we’d appreciate it if you could support our cause in bringing down Lucis. This struggle has gone on for centuries and we—”

“Bringing down Lucis.” His voice is distant, cold as he carefully picks his knife up and tilts it so that it reflects the lamplight.

“I understand that you might consider yourself a Lucian and this might be difficult for you. Then again, the Lucians had you locked away in that prison for nearly two millennia. You, too, must desire the fall of a kingdom that cast you into exile?”

And that gaze is turned on him then, suddenly vicious and full of loathing. There is something horrifically eldritch in his stare as he narrows his eyes and snarls in perfect clarity, “How would you know what I want?”

Verstael doesn’t sleep that night.

In fact, he barely ever sleeps again.

-

Which is why his next test surprises him.

Iedolas is growing impatient with him. _It was such a monumental effort to free that thing from Angelgard, and what has he done for us? You utterly decimated the military budget for the year and you swore to me that we could weaponize the plague, that we could eliminate the Scourge in our own nation, that we could bring Lucis to its knees once and for all by exploiting their childish beliefs in the Astrals._

Verstael waves him off every time. He’s getting somewhere with Ardyn. He knows this, but he keeps this to himself. He has rapidly grown territorial of him, just as the monster has grown territorial with him. He doesn’t think about it too deeply, doesn’t stop to question what it means, which he knows that he _should_ because he questions everything and there’s no purpose to life if one stops being logical. And even though he can’t sleep at night any longer, even though he always feels as if Ardyn is right behind him, touching him, breathing on him, he’s become too comfortable around this thing already.

_Because being trusted, being liked, by a being unto a god is strangely intoxicating._

He doesn’t care that he is slipping into what he had sword to avoid. He lets his guard down. He annoys him. “How do you heal others?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must do something,” he snaps back, his irritation seeping through his vocal chords. It’s ludicrous, it is, that there only ever seems to be one person capable of healing the Scourge alive at any given time, and the bitch, because it’s always a woman, is always in Tenebrae. Obviously there are no gods, or they would realize the absurdity of such a situation.

“Lay my hands upon them, I suppose.”

“Why you and not your brother?”

Anger flashes across his face again and Verstael feels something twist and grow hot inside of him. He likes the reaction, likes prodding the monster to see how he ticks. The mere mention of him, not even by name, seems to make this man’s grasp on reality slip. But he behaves. “What is it you want to hear? I was born able to do it.”

So he tries a new tactic. “How does it spread?”

“I don’t know.” He’s relaxed again, his hackles down, his lazy smile back. _He’d make an excellent politician if he could be civilized enough, if we could be certain he wouldn’t ooze miasma all over court._

Not that it will last, because Verstael grins and leans towards him as he whispers, “Maybe you _lay your hands upon them_?”

Because perhaps, perhaps, Ardyn Izunia Lucis Caelum did not _heal_ the Scourge. And he can see that this, too, has crossed the immortal’s mind, because the fury returns abruptly, a simmering rage that heats the air around him until it _cracks_ and Verstael’s heart skips a few beats.

He remembers something, remembers Mors Lucis Caelum. The crackling of the air around him, the smell of ozone and the sense of foreboding. The Royal Armiger. He has the potential, and Verstael all but claps his hands in delight as he skips back a few paces. And then he _bows_.

The look on Ardyn’s face far outweighs the humiliation, and Verstael Besithia walks away triumphant.

-

His journal is short that night. Four sentences, though Verstael feels that he has accomplished a year of research in one tick of his lifetime.

_The Adagium can access the legendary Armiger. Perhaps I shall take him to one of the tombs and see if he can collect the weapons the same way the Lucian king can._

And _._

_He exhibits emotion. He can be made to feel things._

-

He returns to medical tests after that, now more confident that Ardyn will not kill him, even when enraged, and if he can will the Scourge onto others, he isn’t going to impose it on him, as surely he would have done it that night when Verstael all but dared him to. Now he won’t, not when reverence and fealty was offered.

_They weren’t even false._

And the tests are as expected. He is human, human in a very strange way, as Verstael has managed to establish. He has all of his organs. He can breathe, sleep, and eat, though he doesn’t seem to _need_ to do any of those things. He is in possession of all of his senses, his faculties. He once mentioned being _hot_ in one of the examination rooms. And he has a remarkably high threshold for pain, which means that he can do some very interesting _things_ eventually. In fact, Verstael can’t be certain that he can feel pain at all without doing a full neural scan, which he isn’t quite ready for yet. No need to rush. Better to enjoy the unveiling.

He’s not enjoying this test though. It’s far too awkward.

“Excuse me?” Ardyn is staring at the sterilized, sealed container.

Verstael fidgets. He’s asked many others to perform this over the years, often without even blinking. The mortal body holds no value in itself for him, and he has never felt the least bit uncomfortable studying it until now. “I need to determine whether or not the Scourge has rendered you sterile.”

“I don’t understand. I am old.”

And Verstael gets a hint there, a sense of foreboding. _He can be sarcastic. He’s purposefully trying to make me uncomfortable. He’s seeking revenge for what I did to him earlier._ “You know exactly what I refer to,” he snaps out, and he turns sharply on his heel and slams the door behind him.

Ardyn leaves it in the pass-through. Filled with urine. With a slip of paper. _I might have misunderstood. Your directions were rather poor. (:_

The face at the end is what does Verstael in. _He’d been perfectly lucid all of this time. He’s been aware and observing. He knows exactly what drives me to madness and he chose now to tell me in one insipid little smiley face scrawled on a slip of paper. He’s been treating me like a test subject just as I have been treating him as one._

He drives too fast to Ardyn’s rooms, flies up the stairs and bangs on the door to his apartment with all the fury of the entire army behind him. And when Ardyn answers the door, he already has his finger raised, his mouth open and his eyes narrowed, only for the words to die on his lips.

He acts without thinking for the first time in his life, moves on instinct instead of observing, calculating, throwing another to the wolves and noting the blood splatter patterns. He lunges forward, grabs Ardyn by the collar of his shirt and pushes him back into the room even as he drags him down until their faces are level, until he can press his lips to Ardyn’s so violently he can taste blood.

And this time when the Accursed, the Adagium, reaches over him to slam the door closed, he doesn’t flinch.

-

He doesn’t know what to expect when it comes to interests, past-times. How does a man who existed long before the dawn of electricity know how to spend his time properly in this day and age? His apartment had been furnished with thousands of books and maps and old games. Cards and chess and shogi, things that would possibly amuse him but not alarm him. Verstael can’t imagine a world without the internet, without computers and expensive laboratories and artificial intelligence. He can’t fathom the world as it existed when Ardyn was truly alive.

So it nags at him, seven hours later when he puts his key in the ignition and concentrates all of his efforts on thinking about something other than what happened. The little face Ardyn had drawn. As if he’d used a computer, as if he’d trawled the internet and discovered what people do and say to irritate others in this day and age. Even if he had gotten access to a computer, he wouldn’t have been able to use it, much less navigate the internet. He should be too overwhelmed, to baffled and amazed, to pay any mind to what he was actually reading. _Impossible, impossible, impossible_.

Beyond _what just happened_ , there is one thing that Verstael cannot reconcile, and that is that this man knows too much. For something that has been chained up for nearly two thousand years, he knows too much about what has happened over the centuries, too many _stupid little ingratiating_ things that would never make it to the history books he has now. No. it’s as if he’d _lived_ all of this time.

It almost makes him turn back. Almost. But he finds, to his shame, that he has never needed to write in his journal more than he does right now. _I need to record this. I need to preserve the memory, the experience, of being with a god. I have been chosen by an omniscient being, the king of demons._ He can still feel his hands on him, and he presses his face to his hands clasped on the steering wheel and groans.

-

Speech returns to him far faster than any other social behavior. Except perhaps eye contact. He is eerily, uncomfortably good at that, amber eyes hostile and unblinking, radiating rage and spite towards anyone and anything except occasionally Verstael. Not as often as he’d like.

Speech comes quickly. Manners are another matter. He’d been jabbering on about something or another until Verstael had finally snapped out, corrected him. He knows by now that Ardyn is feigning cluelessness, that he is just seeking provocation, that he can be remarkably childish and petty. Perhaps he was always like that. Perhaps being chained up for two thousand years for being so good the gods were ashamed of their laziness does things to one’s personality, makes them rude and spiteful.

“I’m sorry. Have I wrongly assumed that social mores have changed a tad over the centuries? I suppose I thought that things were different, considering the fact that you’re supposedly twenty-seven but you can’t grow a beard larger than one square centimeter.”

Verstael hisses in frustration and rolls his eyes. Why couldn’t he simply have been mute? Ardyn Izunia has a lot of opinions, and he has only been mute on one subject. Verstael can’t decide if he is grateful for that or not. They haven’t touched since then, though Ardyn had once mentioned sparring and he’d been forced to change the topic, unsure if the Adagium meant sparring with weapons or if he were making an innuendo. He hoped the former.

Which led to this. Sneaking into Lucian territory without even an envoy to one of the Royal Tombs. _Driving_ , not even using an airship, which would attract too much attention. The Lucian people were on high alert after Verstael’s attack on Angelgard had been made known. He’d been shocked that the Emperor had allowed it, even supported the idea _. His lust for control over the Lucian territories is alarming, and it has grown significantly worse since Ardyn awoke._ But he doesn’t want to think about that, about the way that madness has been subtly creeping into the ranks.

 _I don’t care which one. They’re all equally pathetic._ A blatant lie, one of those rare moments when Ardyn betrayed some of his emotions, some of the hurt he has hidden, because Verstael is certain that if he’d taken him to the Tomb of the Mystic, he’d find his own throat slit.

Right now, it might be the reverse. “Stop humming,” he snaps.

-

He isn’t sure when exactly he discovers that he likes him as a _human_ , that Ardyn can be funny and clever and entertaining, that he’s amusing to be around, that he’s intelligent enough to keep Verstael on his toes, that he isn’t like the other idiots that he must deal with every day.

Furthermore, he isn’t sure when he discovers that they have become _friends_ , but at one point it happened. He only recognizes this when Ardyn begins telling him things. Verstael isn’t used to having friends, so he is unsure how to react. _Is it rude to take notes?_ Never mind. He will do it anyway.

Because after six months of doggedly asking him questions about his powers, growing increasingly frustrated with how blood tests and lab work can only go so far, Ardyn drops the bomb.

“It is true, that I can make anyone I want a demon. Also true: I make their minds and thoughts my own when I do. And for your notes, I can also wipe their memories if I wish to.”

He swallows several times before answering. “Everything you knew those first few weeks about the world….” _Was he killing people all that time, somehow?_

“I knew nothing.”

“I don’t believe that. I deduced from the way you used an emoji that…”

“An ii-what?” He grins that lazy cat grin. “I looked at your computer screen when we were in your office that day. I saw a silly face. I thought it would be funny to draw it.”

Verstael falters then. _Did I really overthink all of that? Did he really know nothing all of this time? Was his silence in our first car ride not boredom, but awe? Did he genuinely need that assistance with zippers when I dressed him the first time? Is his remarkable ineptitude at using phones and computers sincere?_ He feels almost guilty for assuming, but he also feels incensed that he’d been so misled, so stupid. He opens his mouth to ask something further, but Ardyn suddenly presses the palm of his hand to his face and whatever words Verstael had were ripped away.

Because Ardyn whispers, “ _I’ll give you and your Empire my magic, if you so desire it. I’ll even give you the Scourge Plasmodium._ ”

-

“The Emperor gave us permission.”

“How lovely,” Ardyn drawls, peering over the railing and down into the prison.

Verstael fidgets again, nervous, though he doesn’t know why. He’s been in the military a decade now. He’s killed plenty of people, some more deserving than others. He’s also seen firsthand the destruction traitors cause, and these men are condemned to execution anyway. Why not let them be useful one last time? “Do as you wish.”

Ardyn grunts, clearly deliberating, as if he, too, doesn’t know how to react to this bizarre situation. And then he’s leaping over the railing, forcing Verstael to scramble down the stairs after him lest he do something before he can witness it.

Which Ardyn very nearly does. Into the first prison cell, _warping through the bars_ , hand on the face of the first traitor. And he does something, something that makes Verstael step forward in awe because he is seeing this demi-god, this divine being that he saved, that he freed from centuries of torture, turn a human into something immortal. He feels something akin to euphoria and he wonders later if he made a sound, because at one point Ardyn looks at him strangely before dropping the corpse to the ground.

“He’ll wake up soon enough. An immortal being of the dark, succumbed to the Scourge.”

He still can’t determine exactly how Ardyn does it, but he will learn. It’s only the first. And he looks at the older man with a sense of wonder. “Do another.”

He forgets they are human. He forgets to feel bad.

-

He goes to the Emperor the next day and gives him a full report, one he finishes with a triumphant grin as he honors and serves his nation. “We can create an army.”

“Of seven traitors,” Emperor Aldercapt murmurs, narrowing his eyes.

“Hardly,” he continues grinning, not oblivious, only uncaring, of the possible insubordination. He is too excited to care. “Ardyn will lend us his power, his _Lucian_ power, as well.”

This catches the older man’s attention, and he leans forward slightly over the Council table. “Magic? He will give us that?”

Verstael nods. “Enough to power an army of armors. We can cut back on soldier deaths, now. Whatever prisoners we take or traitors we find, Ardyn can demonify, and we will have immortal soldiers as well.”

“So one man creates an army…”

He feels his gut drop. _He’s suspicious; why must he be suspicious of me? I found the Adagium. I tamed him, befriended him, convinced him to aid us. Ardyn will do us nothing but good_. “If you have concerns, let us begin construction of a facility far from prizing eyes. If something goes wrong, only the mountains will lay witness.”

And Emperor Aldercapt wavers. He sighs and he leans back and he tells Verstael to leave, to wait for his decision.

It comes at two in the morning the next day. A phone call. A single sentence.

“Insomnia must fall.”

-

The First Magitek Production Facility. November 26th, 723. Little more than eighteen months since Ardyn was freed from the prison. The Emperor had given Verstael permission to more or less withdraw from active combat, something he had seen less and less of as it was thanks to Ardyn taking up much of his time. _Study what you will but keep it from the eyes of as many as possible. Take him with you._

He stands at the foot of the runway, large enough for eight airships at a time. He doesn’t expect to have more than three here for some years, but perhaps _soon_. The facility is finished

He clasps his hands behind his back and rocks forward on his toes a moment. He’s suddenly anxious, giddy with excitement and uncertainty. Such a grand task, to create a new army beside a demigod. Ardyn’s knowledge and power are depthless, and he is offering all of it up to Verstael. He has chosen me, chosen me to impart these things to. _Perhaps eventually, I shall be offered immortality._ He glances over, up at Ardyn, eight inches taller than him.  The man’s face is unreadable, inscrutable, and suddenly it hits Verstael that war is coming and that whatever happens, the two of them will be nearly solely responsible for the fate of the Empire, of Insomnia, indeed of all of Eos.

“If things go badly..”

Ardyn only grins, too-sharp teeth showing in his too-wide mouth. And for the first time, a word flashes through Verstael’s mind. _Hideous_. “If? _When_.”


End file.
